Pleite

Well, now I can add another new experience to my list: being broke.

It's funny how knowing you only have 50 Euros to get you through until you get paid can make you sick to your stomach.

It'd sure be nice if I knew when I get paid.

(Mom, if you're reading this, don't get overworried. Check your e-mail.)

I was sitting relatively pretty up until today. I was a bit concerned about making rent next month, as rent is due on November 3, and I have no idea when I will get paid. We were told our first payment deposit could take from 4-8 weeks. My eight-week mark will be the first Friday in November. However, I had a few hundred dollars left as a little cushion in my American bank account. I've been living frugally, but still enjoying fresh produce and the occasional 1,25€ frozen salmon filet.

As of this afternoon, that bank account will also be depleted.

The good news first? I finally have been accepted as a student at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. Why this has been so important to achieve? My school is a 40+ minute commute from my apartment. If I paid the public transportation fees daily, that would cost me 9€ per day. A monthly ticket would cost me around 80€ per month. Those are prices I just can't afford.

Your next question may be how I have been affording these costs until now. Well... let's just say I haven't. And the two times there were controllers checking tickets on my trains and buses, I got lucky.

As a student, I only have to pay a 216,92€ fee one time per semester. This gets me a student ID, which doubles as a fully functional public transportation ticket within the entire state of Nordrhein-Westfalen. It will be good until the middle of next March.

You can certainly see why being a student in Germany is so important to me.

And, this brings me back to how I went from comfortable to a little freaked out in one day. After playing paperwork shuffle and office-visit-and-e-mail-tag with a worker in the International Office at the university for literally the entire past month, I finally received an e-mail this morning informing me that I have been accepted as a student at HHUD. To matriculate, I simply need to drop by a Mr. Ponce de Leon's office (yes, that apparently really is his name, which is awesome) on Friday morning, and bring proof of health insurance, a self-addressed, stamped envelope in which my student ID will be mailed to me, and a receipt proving I've paid my Sozialbeitrag, or student fees.

I don't want to push the German bureaucracy by delaying my matriculation any longer. To matriculate, I need to pay this fee. To get my Semesterticket ASAP for the public transportation, I need to pay this fee ASAP. I also can't afford to get caught mid-Schwarzfahrt ("black ride") on my way to or from school. The fine for that is a minimum of 40€. In the interest of self-preservation and legality, let it be said that I'm not saying I do that... I'm just sayin'. Y'know.

That leaves me with 50,54€ in cash assets until I get paid. Minus a 1,45€ stamp for my self-addressed, stamped envelope. Yes, I counted.

Come on, Pädagogischer Austauschdienst... don't let me down now.